


no retreat

by finalizer



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, quite possibly the worst thing i've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 06:44:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14538933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finalizer/pseuds/finalizer
Summary: Esmé decides to take Olaf on a day trip, with no ulterior motives whatsoever.





	no retreat

**Author's Note:**

> i could probably blame [carmen](http://theocrain69.tumblr.com) for this, but i'll take full responsibility
> 
> *there's no timeline nor context necessary  
> *feel free to not take this seriously  
> *translation into Russian available **[here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/7059362)**

The car door slammed with a rusty creak and snuffed out all sound from the outside.

“Where are we going?” Olaf demanded for the umpteenth time, and squirmed in the passenger seat like a restless child on an overlong road trip. Five seconds in the wrong seat and he was reaching the limits of his admittedly remarkable patience. He belonged behind the wheel; it was his damn car, after all.

“It’s a surprise,” Esmé replied, also for the umpteenth time.

“Surprise as in all-you-can-drink tequila buffet on you, or surprise as in that one time I promised a surprise, drove off with Lulu for a few hours and came back with a literal pack of lions?”

Esmé floored the gas pedal with more force than was strictly necessary and kept an impassive face as Olaf was slammed back into his seat.

“Seatbelt,” she reprimanded innocently, and Olaf made a point _not_ to do up his seatbelt.

“You really didn't have to do that, just because I mentioned — ”

Esmé put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway in one sharp swerve. Olaf was jerked from his seat and nearly ended up sprawled across the dashboard.

“You’re a cruel woman.”

“Thank you.”

“Where are you taking me?”

The road was pleasantly empty considering the mid-morning hour. Olaf thanked his lucky stars and whatever deities may have been watching and listening. Esmé was, putting it mildly, a menace behind the wheel, and the less obstacles stood in her way the better off they would all be.

“Compliments will get you nowhere — unless I’m in a particularly good mood. You’ll see when we get there.”

“As long as it’s not lions,” Olaf quipped.

“If you keep talking about that, I might just double back to the Hinterlands and see what I can do.”

Olaf snapped his mouth shut, knowing full well that Esmé wasn’t bluffing in the slightest. He then made a legitimate effort to stay proper and polite for a whole forty-five seconds, right up until Esmé ran a red light, swerved to dodge the firetruck that almost smashed into their bumper, and very nearly collided with a lamppost standing innocently on a quaint street corner.

What followed was a string of loud, impressively inventive curses on Olaf’s part, and a stone-faced lack of reaction on Esmé’s.

“You know what, why don’t I take over?” he said eventually, once he ran out of creative profanities and words that rhymed with _fuck_.

“No.”

“I should drive.”

“You can’t.”

Olaf snorted. “ _You_ can’t. That’s exactly what I’m trying to say.”

“We’re almost there.”

“ — Do you understand how embarrassing it would be to get hit by a firetruck? Imagine dying like that, car smashed to pieces, glass everywhere, because of a _firetruck_. A _fire_ — a car wash?”

Esmé pulled to a stop in front of the grand entrance: a gaping tunnel of soap and suds, dirty green paint chipping away from the building’s shabby exterior, bubbly water spewing in rivulets across the concrete.

“A car wash,” Esmé echoed brightly, both hands resting atop the steering wheel in self-satisfied contentment. She’d successfully driven three blocks without damaging private property or decapitating any by-standing pedestrians.

Olaf stared at her like she’d sprouted a second head, even more curly and obnoxiously blonde than the first. “Why?”

“You — the car’s filthy.”

“I — what? The car is what? The _car?_ You could have sent literally anybody to do this, and instead we were almost flattened to death by a _firetruck_ , in case I haven’t made that part clear enough. And why drag me along? You do not need two people to drive through a car wash.”

Esmé hummed noncommittally and leaned over to the glove compartment, Olaf’s words going in one ear and right out the other.

“Do you have any spare change in here?” she muttered, flipping through coffee-stained scripts and used tissues, “I don't have any of my cards on me.”

Olaf watched incredulously as Esmé fished out a few coins and a wad of crumpled bills, then body-slammed the driver’s seat door open (it got stuck on occasion; nothing a solid whack couldn’t fix) and _oh_ , she was hot when she got aggressive. Olaf momentarily forgot why he was angry at her in the first place.

She stepped out and swung the door shut, effectively snapping Olaf out of his misplaced train of thought. He watched through the smudged window as she slipped into the little room on the side of the building that apparently served as the office. Absently, he considered sneaking out of the car and making a run for it, if only to spare himself the nightmarish drive back.

He tried the handle, and was somewhat surprised and mildly annoyed to find that Esmé had locked him in.

Barely a minute passed and she was back, heels clicking across the pavement as she strutted towards the car. This time around, the door opened for her smoothly, and Olaf wanted to flip it off.

“Overpriced,” was all she said as she slipped back into the seat which was rightfully Olaf’s.

“Pointless,” he corrected. “Don’t tell me this is your big surprise.”

“Not quite,” Esmé said, and there was something dangerously playful to her tone now, something that screamed and tugged at Olaf, telling him to _run_.

“Right,” he said instead, dumbly.

The car, put in neutral and sliding along the tracks, began to take the first waves of sloshing water directed at it. It poured out from all sides as they were dragged deeper into the dimly lit abyss.

Esmé rapped her fingernails on the steering wheel in apparent anticipation, watching as the whirring array of sponges and mops drew closer and closer.

Eventually she moved, painfully casual, reaching out once more to open the glove compartment. Olaf watched her warily.

“I thought I saw chapstick in here earlier, do you know where — ”

And without warning, her hand moved a few inches to the side, wrapping around the handle and shoving the passenger seat door wide open. The metal groaned as it gave way and Olaf had less than a second to wonder what the fuck was going on before Esmé redirected her efforts towards shoving him out of the car, directly into the path of a pressurized soap dispenser.

The rest, as they say, was history.

Olaf survived, but just barely, and managed to limp his way over to the exit after being assaulted by multiple sponges and streams of water of various shapes and sizes.

Chilled to the bone, his shoes squishing with every step, he wondered how much jail time he’d get for strangling his girlfriend in broad daylight, and whether he’d be able to escape confinement yet again.

He was relieved to find his car standing at the far end of the parking lot, sparkly clean in the bright sunshine. He’d half expected Esmé to drive off without him, leaving him wet and alone, the madwoman.

He trudged around to the passenger side and jerked the door open hard enough to feel a sharp twinge of pain in his shoulder, then leaned in with what he hoped came off as an air of menacing anger.

“What the _fuck_ were you thinking?”

“You were filthy, darling,” Esmé explained with the kind of gleeful grin she allowed herself when her awful plans panned out flawlessly. 

Olaf opened his mouth to retort, then snapped it shut. He swung a thoroughly soaked leg inside and grunted as he lowered himself onto the leather seat, slamming the door shut with just as little regard for his rotator cuff as he’d had when he’d opened it.

“You’re insane. I’ll have you know, when you tell a guy to expect a surprise, getting tossed face-first into a car wash isn't what he imagines.”

“I thought you might be allergic to bathtubs, the way you avoid them, so I figured this was the next best thing.”

Olaf dripped in silence.

“You look good. Clean,” Esmé continued, and Olaf wanted to wipe that smirk off her lips. Preferably with his lips, but he chose to file that particular thought away for a time when he wasn’t feeling quite as murderous.

“Clean,” he repeated numbly, like he needed more time to process the fact that his girlfriend had gotten up mid-breakfast and announced she had a wonderful surprise, shoved him into his own car like he was a worthless sack of potatoes, nearly turned him into roadkill, then physically threw him from a moving vehicle into a soapy hellscape like some sort of opulently dressed, deranged monster.

Esmé reached over to flatten a tuft of Olaf’s hair that insisted on poking out at an odd angle. It would’ve been a comforting gesture, if the previous five minutes of unadulterated agony hadn't been exclusively her fault.

“Now, I don’t mean to threaten,” she said threateningly, “but the next time you avoid the shower like the plague, I'll devise another scheme, and then another, and another, each more unpleasant than the last.”

Olaf met her eyes and felt a wave of genuine terror roll down his spine. That, or a rivulet of water was making its way down his back. He wasn't one to scare easily, but when she put her mind to something, Esmé was a force to be reckoned with.

“Fine,” he snarled, “but the all-you-can-drink tequila buffet is on you.”

**Author's Note:**

> it's appalling that i haven't written in months, and this is the first thing i churn out when i do
> 
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/finaiizer) & [tumblr](http://esmesqualor.tumblr.com)


End file.
